ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF TARIS. 08 1 



astical dispensation. It was in tlie midst of this consanguineous population that 

 M. Voisin collected his observations. He did not content liiniselt with veriiyiui^ 

 in a general manner the physical prosperity of tlie inlufoitauts. He has recorded 

 the history of each iiousehohl, examined the parents and children, studied the 

 births and deaths, and in a word prepared very complete genealogical tallies, in 

 which is summed up all the information relating to 46 consanguineous mar- 

 riages. In studying these tables, published at the end of the memoir, we cannot 

 help recognizing with M. Voisin, that in a healthy population, consanguinity, 

 even when superposed, involves none of the deterioration which has been attrib- 

 nted to it. After having sojourned at Batz an entire month, and passed in review 

 all the families, our colleague has ascertained that " neither vices of conformation, 

 mental maladies, idiocy, cretinism, surdo-mutism, epilepsy, albinism, nor blind- 

 ness from pigmentary retinitis, exists ki any individual, whether the issue or not 

 of consanguineous parents." 



Analogous observations have been collected by M. Dally in the little isle of 

 Brehat, (.Cotes-du-Xord,) and by M. Duchenne of Boulogne among the popula- 

 tion of Portel. They are less rigorous, indeed, than those of M. Voisin, siuce 

 they are not accompanied by genealogical tallies, but they are still very import- 

 ant ; they are moreover confirmed by the zootechnical ol)servations oi which 

 M. Sanson has presented ns a summary, and which are due to M. Renard of 

 Issoirc, and M. Legrain of Brussels. M. Legrain has especiall}' turned his atten- 

 tion to the production of all)inism in rabbits; it results from his experiments, 

 divided into several series and conducted with great sagacity, that consanguinity 

 never produces albinism among those animals when they are reared under good 

 hygienic conditions; but that albinism manifests itself at the end of some gene- 

 rations when the rabbits are ill-fed and lodged in dark and unclean warrens. 

 Nothing could better justify the distinction advanced by M. Perier between 

 healthy and morbid consanguinity than this example. 



The questions of consanguinity and hybridity, and the discussions to which 

 they have given rise, natm'ally lead me to consider the numerous communications 

 of M. Sanson on the characteristics of race and of species. It is, in effect, the 

 study of the phenomena of generation, direct or crossed, which serves as a basis 

 to the doctrine s.ustained with so much conviction by our colleague. 



The authors who have occupied themselves with the determination of species 

 may be divided into two classes: one, and by far the more numerous class, makes 

 , specific distinctions rest on the enseinhlc of the morphological and anatomical 

 characters; the other, after the example of Bay, Bufibn, and M. Flourens, admits 

 as a criterion of species only one sole and unique character purely physiological, 

 namely, the perfect fecundity of sexual nnions. M. Sanson accepts at once both 

 these zoological methods, which heretofore have disputed the suti'rages of savants; 

 he holds them both as valid, but applies them to diflbrent cases. -He employs 

 the physiological method for constituting the group called species, and avails 

 himself exclusively of the anatomical method for the determination of the races 

 of each species. These races are not, in his view, varieties resulting froui the 

 sulidivisiou more or less tardy of a species previously uniform and homogeneous. 

 They arc primordial, or, in other words, as ancient as the species itself; they are 

 moreover permanent and immutable ; that isto say, neither the influence of climatic 

 mediums, nor crossings, nor selection can cause them to deviate in a durable 

 manner from their primitive type. In other terms, as M. Lagneau has expressed 

 it, M. Sanson attributes to each of the races which compose a species the pro- 

 l)erties and characters hitherto attributed by classic naturalists to the species itself; 

 a sense which M. Sanson himself elsewhere conveys in saying that it was his 

 object ''to introduce a substitution of race for sxtecies as the last term of natural 

 classification." 



The doctrine of our colleague is in the end, therefore, but an emphatic and 

 absolute form of polygcnisra. But the discussion to which it has given rise in 



